CHAPTER XVII

MISSING: A BROTHER

In the bright sunlight of early morning, No Man's Land was a sight to behold. It was fairly covered with grayish-green forms, rifles, tin cups and accoutrements belonging to Fritz. Here and there one of the grayish-green figures was seen to move feebly. The majority, however, lay motionless. Uncle Sam's rifles and machine guns had done their deadly work only too well.

As for the German front-line trench, it was practically ruined. That it was still inhabited was proven by bullets which whined across No Man's Land every time a Sammy chanced to expose his body ever so little. Sammy sharp-shooters were also on the job, returning the compliment with interest when the least sign of a Hun was visible.

Looking through the periscope at the wreck across the way, Jimmy Blaise again marveled that he was alive and unhurt. Compared to the bombardment of last night his first experience of being under fire seemed mild. He wondered that so many of his comrades were still left in the fire trench, practically uninjured.

The American fire trench itself was a sickening sight. It was sticky with mud and blood and littered with the shattered bodies of dead Sammies, each in itself a ghastly horror.

Here and there detached arms and legs added to the gruesome spectacle. Not far from where Jimmy stood at the periscope lay the head and trunk of a Khaki Boy cut fairly in two by an exploding shell.

As yet the stretcher-bearers were too busy to remove these dreadful evidences of the night of carnage through which Jimmy had somehow passed unscathed.

Since the cessation of firing on both sides he had been picking his way through the trench, seeking his bunkies. His search, thus far, fruitless, Jimmy had paused briefly to look through the periscope.

He was savagely glad at the slaughtered Boches it revealed, yet his real object in viewing bloody No Man's Land was to see if, among that gray-green assemblage of motionless, distorted shapes, he could catch a flash of olive drab uniform that had once held a living, breathing bunkie, Franz Schnitzel.

Unable to discover that which his straining eyes eagerly sought, he turned away from the periscope and stumbled on down the trench, blinded by the swift blur of tears. Where was Schnitz, and would he presently come upon Iggy, Bob and Roger, or what had once been his three Brothers?

He had hoped to find Dalton easily, as their stations were so close together, but he had seen no trace of cheery old Bob. His spirits dropped to zero, Jimmy poked a disconsolate head into a dugout. It was filled with wan-faced, disheveled men, nearly all of whom had sustained minor injuries, which they were attending to themselves with the help of first-aid packets.

Uttering a loud cry, Jimmy suddenly bolted into the dugout and straight to a corner where a man was engaged in binding up the injured wrist of another.

"Oh, you two!" he choked.

Dropping down at the feet of the busy pair he buried his face in his hands, sobbing out of sheer nervous relief.

"My ver' bes' Brothar!"

His wounded wrist forgotten, Ignace Pulinski jerked away from Roger Barlow and plumped down beside Jimmy, hugging the latter with his well arm.

"Blazes!" was all Roger could say as he bent and laid a hand on Jimmy's shoulder.

"Gee, but I'm a big baby!" Jimmy raised his head and beamed at his bunkies with wet eyes. "I guess I'm all in. I've seen so many dead ones in the last few minutes that I could hardly believe my own eyes when I lamped you two.

"Let go of me, you old Polish bear!" This affectionately to Ignace, whose good arm still encircled his neck. "Up on your feet and get that wrist fixed. You've pulled the bandage almost off of it."

Getting to his own feet, Jimmy hauled Ignace to a standing position.

"Now stand still, Iggins, and let me do you up," he commanded. "Does it hurt you much?"

"No-a. Never I feel sooch hurt. It is the little one from the piece shail. It is the hurt here." Ignace's well hand touched the region of his heart. "Think I, mebbe so is Jimmy, Bob, Schnitz, daid. Now is my heart better. Still is the ache we don' see the nothin' Bob an' Schnitz. Roger have no get the scratch. For that am I the glad. Now see you are the all to him good. It is the great happiness."

"Rodge and I are a couple of lucky guys." Jimmy's tones vibrated with thankfulness. "I can't find Bob. I think he must have been wounded. His station was near mine. I've hunted all along there among----"

Jimmy paused. The horror of that search robbed him of words to continue.

"We were going to hunt for you as soon as I tied up Iggy's wrist. We've looked for Schnitz." Roger's voice was rather unsteady. "His station was near ours. I'm afraid he never came back----"

"He's missing." Jimmy shook his head sadly. "But he did his bit all right for the Army." Triumph rang in this tribute to his absent bunkie. "We met last night out there."

Lowering his voice, Jimmy recounted the events of the scouting party. His gray eyes glowed with pride as he told of Schnitzel's splendid achievement.

"And to think that he couldn't be the one to come back with the news he risked his life to get! It makes me sick," Jimmy ended with a groan.

"Splendid old Schnitz," eulogized Roger. "A real Brother from the word go. I thought as much of him as of you and Bob and Iggins, even if I hadn't known him as long."

"No one could help liking him. He was my idea of a thorough-going man. I know we've got to expect this horrible business of losing one another, but it comes hard. Tough luck!"

"Mebbe Schnitz no daid. Mebbe him prisonar," faltered Ignace. "So think I better be daid than go live by Boche."

"Here, too," agreed Jimmy bitterly. "I'd rather think him dead ten times over than at the mercy of those black-hearted fiends. We ought to treat the prisoners we took the same way they've threatened to do to our men. But we won't. We're human and they're inhuman.

"We've got to get busy and find Bob," he reminded. "I'd be as much in the dumps about him as Schnitz, if it wasn't that I know that whatever has happened to him, he's not a prisoner of the Hun dogs. I'm going out now to look again for him. You fellows wait here for me. We'll soon have coffee and grub handed us. I'll take a hike up the trench and come back in time to eat with you. Afterward I'll go at it again unless I get a detail that'll keep me from it. Last night's fracas means hard work all day and lots of it."

Leaving his bunkies in the dugout, Jimmy retraced his steps through that ghastly lane of dead men. Every few paces he paused to stare darkly at a still form, the face of which was smashed beyond identification.

Frequently he stooped over such an one and examined the identification tag attached to the left wrist. He also kept a sharp look-out for a gold service ring which Bob had worn on the ring finger of his right hand. The four Brothers had service rings exactly alike, save for the initial engraved on each plate. These rings had been given them by the Blaises during that memorable Christmas furlough spent with Jimmy's parents.

This careful scrutiny of the dead, coupled with the constant passing to and fro of stretcher-bearers, made his progress through the trench very slow. The groans of the wounded wrenched his heart. Often he stopped and held his water bottle to the lips of a pain-crazed Sammy, who moaned piteously for water. Again a stretcher-bearer would solicit his help in placing a wounded soldier gently upon a stretcher.

It was during one of these labors of mercy that Jimmy stumbled upon news of Bob. Assisting a couple of first-aid men to place the bleeding wreck of an infantryman upon a stretcher, one of them looked sharply over and said:

"I think we took a friend of yours back quite a while ago. A black-eyed, curly-haired chap. I saw him with you after the bombardment the other morning when we came up here to carry off the casualties. He was at the dugout afterward to get his face fixed up. The plaster was still on it when we took him back this morning."

"That's Bob! What happened to him?" Jimmy fairly shouted his question.

"Knocked out by a piece of shell. It grazed his scalp and put him to sleep. Nothing very serious. Come along with us and you can see him. We'll fix it for you," was the kindly offer.

"You're all to the mustard," Jimmy responded gratefully. "Will I go along? Well, you bet."

Trotting along behind the stretcher, Jimmy was soon in the communication trench. A short walk brought him to a first-aid dugout. It was full of cots, on which lay wounded soldiers, many of whom would soon be on the way to a hospital back of the lines.

"There's your man." Pointing to a cot, the good-natured stretcher-bearer immediately turned to attend to his work.

Jimmy, however, did not need direction. He had already spied Bob.

"Hello, Blazes," greeted a faint but cheerful voice, as Jimmy reached the cot. Very white, his head bandaged, Bob's grin was still in evidence.

Tears again rushed to Jimmy's eyes as he grabbed the hand Bob stretched out to him.

"I've been hunting you ever since the guns quit," he said brokenly. "Are you hurt any place besides your head?"

"Nope. A piece of shell barked my venerable cocoanut. The rainmaker had to put a few stitches in it. It's all right now. I'm going to dig out of here first chance I get. I'll be back in the nice safe fire trench before night. Just watch my speed. Maybe I'm not tickled to see you, you blazing Blazes! What about Roger, Iggy and Schnitz?"

Bob's voice rose in worried alarm.

"Roger is O. K. Iggy got his wrist gashed by a bit of shell. Schnitz----"

Jimmy gulped.

"Gone West?"

The question came almost in a whisper.

"Missing. Never came back from No Man's Land."

Rapidly Jimmy again related all he knew of Schnitzel. When he had finished, a heavy silence descended upon the two.

"Poor Schnitz!" Bob said at last. "Brave, wonderful Schnitz, I mean. He was all A. and no G. Well, Blazes, it's a great life, but it doesn't last long. We do our little bit of a bit and away we go, Westward bound. What we miss to-day we'll get to-morrow, maybe. The Glory Road is a pretty dangerous thoroughfare these days. Just the same, it's the only road any right-minded fellow can travel. I'm not sorry I took to it. Hope I last long enough to run a few Boches into the ditch."

"The 'ditch' is full of 'em this morning," was Jimmy's grim response. "Most of that crack Prussian regiment is taking a long sleep out there in No Man's Land. Their fire trench is all smashed in and the Dutchies don't dare show a head. Our fellows are potting 'em right along. You ought to see it."

"I'm going to."

Bob swung his legs over the side of the cot and stood up, swaying a little. "Hang the rainmakers," he grumbled. "Bobby was a sick Sammy, but he's improving werry fast. Come on, let's beat it out of here. I'm going back to the fire trench and enjoy myself. My pack is kicking around here somewhere. That shell did for my helmet. You'd better go on ahead. I'll follow soon. Goodness knows what happened to my rifle. I can get another easily enough."

Jimmy could not help smiling. Nothing short of utter disablement would keep restless Bob long in bed.

"You lie down and take it easy," he admonished. "I'm going back to tell the fellows you're still alive and kicking."

"Sure I'm alive," grinned Bob. "Kicking, of course I am. Who wouldn't be? Do you think a little biff on the bean is going to keep Bobby indoors? Nix. You go ahead and break the glad news to Iggins and Rodge. I'll rustle up my lost traps and kiss this place good-bye. They've got their hands full here. They'll never miss me."

Thus urged, Jimmy left the first-aid dugout and hurried back to the front-line trench to apprise his bunkies of the good news. Good old Bob had been spared to them. He thanked God for that. Yet his heart was heavy with sadness, as he thought of Franz Schnitzel.

He could not reconcile himself to believe that he would never see Schnitz again. Within him rose a curious conviction that their good-bye in the shell crater had not been a final farewell. He had a "hunch," as it were, that Schnitz and himself would meet again, and before long.